LIFE AND CAREER:

Milton Atsushi Murayama was born on April 10, 1923 to Isao Murayama and Sawa Yasukawa. He had three brothers and four sisters.

Murayama spent his childhood on Pu’ukoli’i Plantation near Lahaina, Maui. By his own admission, he was very studious, hardworking, and performed well in school. He attended Grammar School through 1937 and graduated with honors from Lahainaluna High School on June 4, 1941. During his senior year of high school, Murayama won a Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) writing award and a column was written about him in a local newspaper. This was the first major award Murayama received for his writing.

When war came to Hawaii on December 7, 1941, Murayama was already an ROTC member of the Hawaii Territorial Guard. That very day he went from being on reserve to an active duty member, but only served for one month and nineteen days before his unit was dissolved on January 24, 1942. He was inducted into the military on January 3, 1944 where he volunteered for translator, interpreter, and interrogator work in the Pacific. He was shipped to Camp Savage in Hastings, Minnesota where he received 36 weeks of specialized training in the Japanese language at the Military Intelligence Service Language School. Murayama took these skills with him when he was deployed to the China-Burma-India Theater where he spent time in India, China, and Taiwan. Murayama was stationed in Calcutta, India until the end of the war whereupon he was transferred to Taiwan to oversee the surrender and repatriation of Japanese troops and civilians. According to his discharge papers, Murayama “collected, evaluated, translated and distributed enemy information secured by other intelligence units…Assisted in interrogating and searching of Japanese prisoners of war, [and] acted as an interpreter for American Officers in conversing with non-English speaking individuals” (Army, 1946). For his service in World War II, Murayama received the Asiatic Pacific Service medal, the American Campaign Service medal, the World War II Victory medal, and a Good Conduct medal. His official rank was Technician Fourth Grade in the Headquarters Company China Service Command. He was honorably discharged on May 25, 1946 during his third year of study at University of Hawaii at Manoa.

While at UH Manoa, Murayama studied English, philosophy, literature, and other related subjects. Murayama was also a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree on June 10, 1947. Afterwards, Murayama moved to New York City to pursue a master’s degree in Chinese and Japanese philosophy at Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia in 1950.

Throughout his early adult life, Murayama lived and worked in Washington DC and Minneapolis. In DC, he worked at the Armed Forces Medical Library and received a certificate from The United States Treasury Department. In Minneapolis Milton met his first wife, Nadine Felton, and they got married during his time at Camp Savage in 1944. They later divorced in 1955. Murayama would marry his second wife, Dawn Murayama (nee Combs) in California in 1967.

Murayama eventually settled in San Francisco sometime in the 1950s where he lived out the rest of his life. In San Francisco, Murayama made a career working for the U.S. Customs as a Senior Import Specialist, where he was responsible for determining the tariff classification and dutiable value of imported goods. He credits this position for his success as a writer. “Customs truly enabled me to follow my dream to become an author,” he wrote (My Life in Customs, 2014). He earned enough income to be able to publish All I Asking For Is My Body, thereby kickstarting his second career as an author.

WORKS:

From a very young age, Murayama dreamed of becoming a writer. During his college and young adult years he wrote three novels and a play (two of which, The Night Is Young and Kings and Beasts, are in this collection). Though agents and publishers alike praised his writing ability, these early works were never accepted for publication. In 1959, the Arizona Quarterly published his short story “I’ll Crack Your Head Kotsun”, which would later be republished as part of All I Asking For Is My Body.

In 1975, Murayama self-published All I Asking For Is My Body under Supa Press (named after the family dog at the time). The marketing and promotion for this novel was a boots-on-the-ground family affair with Murayama’s wife, Dawn, traveling to Hawaii to advertise it in person. All I Asking For Is My Body follows Kiyoshi “Kiyo” Oyama and his family living and working on a Maui sugar cane plantation during the 1930s and 40s. Through Kiyo’s eyes readers are exposed to the rich, multi-faceted experience of growing up Japanese American in Hawaii. All I Asking For Is My Body proved to be a runaway success, selling 13,000 copies and establishing Murayama as a popular Hawaiian author.

Murayama published his second novel Five Years On A Rock in 1994 under University of Hawaii Press. This novel is the sequel to All I Asking For Is My Body, but serves more so as a prequel. The story is told from the perspective of Kiyo Oyama’s mother Sawa as she recounts her life as a picture bride in Hawaii. Sawa’s narrative gives a voice to generations of women who left their families in Japan and came to Hawaii in search of wealth only to end up impoverished and stuck toiling on the plantations.

Plantation Boy, published in 1998, was Murayama’s third novel and the third installment in his Oyama Family tetralogy. This novel is told from the point of view of Kiyo’s older brother Tosh. In this novel, Tosh shares his struggle to break free of traditional filial responsibilities and forge a life and identity of his own. He describes how he manages to break the cycle of poverty by leaving the plantation and building a career for himself as a distinguished architect. Much like how Sawa gave a voice to Hawaii’s picture brides, Tosh gives a voice to Hawaii’s Nisei generation.

Murayama’s fourth novel is Dying In A Strange Land (2008). This is the final work in his tetralogy and it weaves together the narrative strands started in the previous three novels. This story is told from Kiyo, Tosh, and Sawa’s alternating perspectives. In this novel, these characters share their lives throughout the latter half of the twentieth century as youth gives way to old age and the world around them rapidly changes.

After Dying In A Strange Land, Murayama began to write a compilation work titled Odds and Ends. This book was a legacy project set to contain various articles and short stories Murayama wrote about his life and the Oyama family. However, Murayama passed away before it could be completed.

In addition to these books, Murayama wrote plays. Two of these plays - Yoshitsune and an adaptation of All I Asking For Is My Body - were produced for the stage. Yoshitsune is a kabuki play about the historical figures Yoritomo and Yoshitsune from 12th-century Japan. Kumu Kahua and Hawaii Performing Arts Company put on this play at Manoa Valley Theatre in 1982. All I Asking For Is My Body received two separate productions. In San Francisco, The Asian American Theater Company’s 1989 production opened to great critical acclaim. The second production was in Hawaii in 1999 at the Kumu Kahua Theatre. In 1981 Murayama wrote one other play, Althea, which never reached fruition. The Ala Moana and Massie Trials, which occurred in 1930s Honolulu, make up the play’s subject matter. Since this play is based on controversial true events, Murayama was concerned that a production of it could have been perceived as an invasion of privacy by those still living who were involved.

Finally, in 1992 Murayama wrote a screenplay adaptation of All I Asking For Is My Body titled The Debt. While film producers expressed an interest in adapting All I Asking For Is My Body for the silver screen, Murayama always turned down these requests. He wanted to participate in the film production process, but had his hands full with finishing his tetralogy. Ultimately, The Debt was never produced.

THEMES:

On multiple occasions Murayama has admitted to the autobiographical nature of his tetralogy. The Oyama family is inspired by the Murayama family, and the events which happened to them are broadly true to life. Murayama disclosed in a letter that he changed the names of his family members and the people with whom they had direct relationships. However, he kept the names of the other background characters the same. As evidence of this, this collection contains correspondence between Murayama and a fan who contacted him because they saw their ancestor’s name in Plantation Boy (see [Box 5, Folder 5]). Publishing fictionalized accounts of real events is not without risk, though. Murayama received temporary backlash from his family for revealing their internal struggles to the world. Murayama’s response was that it’s important to be honest with what you say and write. “Talk stink with love,” he said. “You have to tell the truth and it’s gonna hurt, but you want to do it with sympathy” (Matsumoto, 2008).

Additionally, a quality of Murayama’s writing that sets it apart is the inclusion of Hawaiian Creole English, commonly known as Pidgin. In his article “Problems Of Writing In Dialect And Mixed Languages” (1979-1980) he wrote, “The aim of writing is to get as close as possible to the experience, and if the experience is dialect, you write dialect” (p. 8). This proved to be a challenge since pidgin is a language designed to be spoken, not written. In order to make pidgin intelligible to his audience, Murayama developed his own system of writing it. He used certain phonetic spelling rules on words, captured the rhythm of pidgin in dialogue, and sprinkled a few pidgin expressions throughout the narrative (Remarks, p. 61). The incorporation of pidgin was well received by the general public in Hawaii and made Murayama’s work more appealing.

Furthermore, Murayama’s novels have the recurring themes of gaman and gambare: patience, perseverance, and doing your best. These are traditional Japanese values that Sawa, Kiyo, and Tosh embody throughout the novels. In Five Years On A Rock, Sawa references the Japanese proverb “three years sitting on a rock,” which teaches gaman. What happens when you sit on a rock for three years? Eventually, it will get warm. In light of this proverb, Sawa was prepared to persevere in Hawaii for even five years. The readers, however, bear witness to her continued gaman as five years becomes a life-long endeavor. Gambare, doing your best, is embodied by Sawa in how hard she works on the plantation, sewing for extra income, and providing for her family. Kiyo and Tosh demonstrate gaman and gambare by having the gumption to pursue their dreams, despite it taking many years for those dreams to bear fruit. Murayama, who represented himself as Kiyo in the novels, was once asked about his philosophy of life. He responded, “You have to go and seek or pursue what you believe in and what moves you, what gives you energy and strength. But in my case, I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. And I never gave it up….I gave it my all” (Matsumoto, 2008).

Last but not least, the themes of freedom and individualism are expressed throughout these novels. Murayama explains it best in his own words, "When you’re dealing with two conflicting cultures, you face a problem. Are you going to be pro-one, pro-the-other, or impartial? If impartial, how? What I worked out was simple: I will use the same yardstick of honesty on both, I will criticize the Japanese family system with the same candor I criticize the plantation system. But what about the priority of values? Which is number one? Here again the key was simple: whatever promotes freedom is good, whatever suppresses it is not good." (Problems of Writing, p. 10) He later writes of All I Asking For Is My Body, “My theme is the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism. And so the environments of the family and the plantation are inseparable from the theme” (Remarks, p. 60). These themes are fleshed out in the characters of Kiyo and Tosh who, in their own ways, seek to shake off the filial obligations placed upon them by their parents and the generational poverty shackled to them by Hawaii’s plantation system. In doing so, their success and flourishing may be interpreted as a realization of “The American Dream.”

HONORS:

Over the course of his life, Murayama received several awards for his writing:

• A VFW writing award in 1941.
• An American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1980. Notably, Murayama was one of the inaugural recipients of this prestigious award.
• The Hawaii Award for Literature in 1992.
• The Ka Palapala Po’okela Award for Five Years on a Rock (1995) and Plantation Boy (1999).
• In 2002, Murayama was named a Library Laureate by the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library.

• The Pacific Northwest Asian American Writers Conference in June 1976 at the University of Washington in Seattle.
• Hawaii’s Ethnic American Writers’ Conference: “Talk Story: Our Voices in Literature and Song” in June 1978 at UH Manoa’s Mid-Pacific Institute.

• Army of the United States. (1946). Separation qualification record. Print.
• Matsumoto, M. (Director). (2008). Milton murayama 2008 book signing maui, hawaii [Film]. Michael Matsumoto.
• Murayama, M. (1979-1980). Problems of writing in dialect and mixed languages. Bamboo ridge: The hawaii writers’ quarterly, no. 5, 8-10.
• Murayama, M. (1980). Remarks by milton murayama: October 16, 1980. In Chock, E., & Manabe, J. (Eds.), Writers of hawaii: A focus on our literary heritage (pp. 59-61). Bamboo Ridge Press. Print.
• Murayama, M. (2008). Dying in a strange land. University of Hawaii Press. Print.
• Murayama, M. (2014). My life in customs. Print.